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Porsche Wants You to Use Maps for Exploration—Not Navigation

Porsche thinks its cars’ navigation feature can make exploring the world on four wheels more fun and engaging—and thus make driving more experience than chore.

Mapbox

Wherever the future of driving leads us, Porsche is sure of one thing: We’re going to need some excellent maps. And not just for navigation, either.

That’s why Porsche is announcing today a collaboration with open source mapping platform Mapbox. Designers from the two companies are working together to explore new ways of using in-car maps, making them more than tools for getting from one place to another as efficiently as possible.

Mapbox’s software is useful here because it lets users build their own kinds of maps—it’s what underpins Snap Map and Tinder’s Places.

Mapbox

The goal for Porsche is to use its cars’ navigation feature as a way to make exploring the world on four wheels more fun and engaging—and thus make driving more experience than chore. Mapbox’s software is useful here because it lets users build their own kinds of maps—it’s what underpins Snap Map and Tinder’s Places. Gana Meissner, Porsche’s head of UX and UI, calls it “a tool that lets designers try things out and experiment like artists do.”

Meissner’s team first came across Mapbox last year, while developing interior graphics for the Mission E Turismo concept. Teams from the two companies met this time last year at Slush, the startup conference in Helsinki, and decided to work together more seriously; three months ago they settled on this more formal partnership.

What their collaboration will yield, exactly, remains to be seen—they haven’t settled on anything that would go into a production car just yet. But maybe it incorporates some sort of augmented reality. Maybe it’s social elements, like leaving “notes” on your favorite roads, for friends who might drive your route a few days later, or for whom you construct an elaborate scavenger hunt.

The ideas here remain nebulous, but Porsche is wise to be thinking about this way of evolving the in-car experience.

Mapbox

One thing it’s not is for making your commute better by letting you know which bridge is more horribly choked by traffic, or any other way. “We’re not saying you need to enjoy your commute,” Meissner says. “That’s probably a tough challenge.” And he says it’s not about adding features for the sake of expanding the options list. “We don’t want to cram more stuff into that rectangle. We like it as a rare place to unplug.”

These maps would be tools for exploration, then, rather than navigation. It’s definitely nebulous, but it’s not superfluous. Porsche is wise to be thinking about this way of evolving the in-car experience. Because we’ll drive for fun, curving through the mountains and up the coast, long after the robots eliminate our boring commutes, and that’s where the value of owning a Porsche would be clearest. If the German automaker can keep the act of driving fun with top notch performance while also showing you where your friends have been, or when to hit this hill for the best view, or whatever else it thinks of, it bolsters its argument keeping your hands on the wheel and your feet working the pedals—and the Porsche badge on your hood.